What were the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany?

The Nuremburg Laws were laws that were enacted by the government of Nazi Germany as a way of discriminating against Jews. The laws have their name because they were announced at a party rally in the city of Nuremburg in 1935. These laws were one of the first tangible moves towards oppression of the Jews by the Nazis.

The Nazi Party believed that Jews were the enemies of the German people. They believed that Jews were subhumans who could only destroy cultures that had been created by other, more advanced races. They blamed the problems of Germany on the Jews. Therefore, they wanted to push Jews out of German life. The Nuremburg Laws were a way to start this process.

The Nuremburg Laws defined a Jew as anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents. These people were deprived of most of their civil rights. The laws banned these Jews from holding German citizenship and took away most of their other rights as well. These were the beginning of official Nazi persecution of the Jews, persecution which led to what we now call the Holocaust.

Simple definition: The Nuremburg Laws were anti-Jewish regulations that excluded German Jews from becoming citizens in the Nazi Reich. Additionally, it also prevented Jews from marrying or laying with German or German-related (and obviously non-Jewish) blood.

To be classified as a "Jew" in Nazi Germany, you could be born of Jewish parents or even have just three or four grandparents who were Jewish/belonged to the Jewish community. Even Germans who had not practiced Judaism, but had family who were Jewish, found themselves subject to the Nuremburg Laws and later Nazi extremism. The law also applied to anyone who had Jewish grandparents that later converted to Christianity, because initially they were born of/practiced Judaism.

The Nuremburg Laws fueled anti-Semitism in Germany, encouraged anti-Semitic propaganda, and resulted in an increase in German-on-Jew violence.

The Laws were published on September 15, 1935 and read by Reichstag President Hermann Goring, who was an important figure in the Nazi party during WWII. It was billed as a "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor", as Hitler and the Nazi party considered Jews the "mortal enemy" of the German People.

The Nuremberg Laws were laws that allowed the Germans to become racially superior. These laws for exampled did not allow German Jews to join the Reich, and they could not marry or have sexual relations with anyone of "German" blood.

These laws also established that you could be considered a Jew if you have a few Jewish grandparents or relatives. This actually means you could not practice Judaism, but if your relatives do or did you would still be considered in league with them and be prosecuted. There were many different ways that the Nuremberg laws were prejudicial against Jews, and made their lives extremely miserable in Germany.

The Nuermberg Laws were enacted by the Nazi authorities in 1935 as a means to disenfranchise German Jews. Driven by anti-Semitic sentiments within the party, the laws sought to effectively eliminate the so-called race threat that the Nazis had identified within the Jewish population. It redefined ethnicity (Jews were no longer viewed as a religious group but were instead recognised by one’s parentage - anyone who had three or more Jewish grandparents was identified as a Jew) and made it impossible for the Jews to do anything in Germany. As a minority group that had been financially successful and disproportionately well-represented, the Jews now found themselves degraded to second-class citizens in their own country. They were excluded from German citizenship and increasingly forced to cede their ownership rights of businesses to German subordinates or colleagues. In an humiliating gesture, the Jews were also forced to bear identifying marks that demarcated their Jewish status in public. Similarly, anti-Semitic attacks against the Jewish population were not only tolerated but encouraged by the party. The laws, by banning mixed marriages and procreation between the “race enemy” and the pure Aryan, too sought to prevent the Jews from contaminating the German ethnic race. In doing so, the Nuremberg Laws essentially served as a means to keep the financial and political power of the Jews in check, and to, in the long run, eliminate them from all forms of German life.